


Begotten Gold

by DuPhilycheesesteak



Series: Cliche Cafe [1]
Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Be kind but fair, Couldnt believe deviantly wasnt a word so i just made it one anyway, Couldnt help myself, First Post, Just some late night drabble, Lovely boys in almost love, M/M, Narry is my ship, Not Beta'd, Oh my god tags, Open but happy and hopeful ending, Slight Doctor Who easter egg, Total Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-23
Updated: 2016-06-23
Packaged: 2018-07-16 18:57:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7280725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DuPhilycheesesteak/pseuds/DuPhilycheesesteak
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry is a beautiful loner (who cant see his beauty) sitting in a dingy coffee shop when he notices Niall, the impossibly beautiful boy with a blinding smile.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Begotten Gold

It was amazing, the way it was so simple. 

There was no cliché epiphany of 'love at first sight', no heavenly choir straining their vocal chords in order to reach my hearts jaded ears, no Cupids arrow biting me on the ass, instead, there was the incessant ringing of a cellphone, coffee that was too hot, and a beaten up old pencil.

The polyester booth I currently sat in was an abhorrent shade of orange, comprised of indiscernible geometric shapes that were synonymous with cafe's trying too hard to be cool. I valued my privacy, especially after a rather trying day at work, and had chosen the booth tucked in a lonely corner, far from the café's door and subsequent customers. I'm nothing if not methodical. 

I had ordered my usual black coffee, grabbing the two packets of sugar and small carton of cream to be added when finally sat and huddled away. Impatient man that I am however, I took a sip too soon, burning my the roof my mouth along with my tongue, tipping the scales irreversibly for the day from 'alright' to 'total crap'. I stared at the offending liquid, ensconced in an equally cheesy café style mug, and decided that reading was the best way to move forward, hoping literature would provide the balm it normally did. 

I was only a few pages in when I noticed him. 

The other café loner.

He was sat a few booths in front of me, at the cafes solitary table, round and made of raw wood, it fit the ambience to a T. The boy however, was less uniform. His hair was rather a mess, askew and star fishing about as though it had been pulled from multiple angles by multiple hands. With brown reading glasses hanging precariously at the tip of his round nose, his bent over shoulders spoke of intense focus, further confirmed by the sliver of pink tongue that peaked from the corner of his mouth. 

I would later realize he was beautiful, but, at the time, he was only rather annoying.

Almost immediately after taking notice of him, his phone rang, blaring out the grating standard jig all IPhones are set with. I thought it was my own at first, but quickly remembered that I had left mine in my car, technology had never been extremely paramount to me. And it wasn't just once, after ending each call after the first few rings, the boy finally answered the damn thing, barking out a greeting in a rough Irish brogue. His conversation only lasted a few moments, and, when he terminated the call, he returned to his hunched position and stared most determinedly at the papers he had strewn across the table, apparently not taking notice of the few gravity had led to the floor beneath his chair. He had a few text alerts afterwards, each ping a further tick of annoyance for me, but he continued on in his private bubble of consternation, while I continued to try and convince myself that my current novel was just simply too boring to hold my attention. I've often wondered why humans attempt to lie to themselves when its never a very successful endeavor. Though my novel may not have been too enthralling, it was the boy who demanded my attention, try as I might to believe otherwise. 

There was something sad about him, something that divided him from the rest of the world. Here he sat, in one of the more secluded areas within the café, but he didn't strike me as introverted, not like myself. He didn't seem to shrink away from the world as I know I tended to, instead, he seemed to soak in and exude it. There was an almost golden light enveloping him, tempting those around him to investigate its owner. 

People had always been beautiful to me. From physical aesthetic to internal intangibilities, there is measurable beauty within just about everyone, with a few, evil exclusions. Mankind is brilliant, with what it can create and imagine, living, breathing art really. However, I also firmly rely on the idea of balance, and nature is nothing if not symmetrical. Where there's beauty, there's also grime, and humans can be as horrible as their vivid imagination allows, and then some. Everyone is a certain shade of grey, a swatch of white and black combined, its just simple facts. This boy however, seemed to be something else entirely, and I was thoroughly convinced within the span of half an hour, that should someone manage to dissect the raggedy boy, somehow slice him in half, he would be solid gold throughout, and that terrified me. Surely, if someone was so obvious and transparently bright, there must an equally dark side, and I shivered and marveled at the depth of that potential shade. 

He was shining, but such illumination couldn't blind me from the fact that he was beautifully broken, a veritable act of kintsukuroi before my very eyes. Perhaps it had been a lover gone enemy, or an upbringing that Hallmark would gasp at, or maybe life just tended to hand him shitty card after shitty card, either way, he was shattered, but still intact, a paradox that boggled my caffeine deprived mind. 

His annoyance may have caught my attention, but it was the impossibility of his existence that kept it. 

To try and gather my quickly unraveling thoughts, I sought out an immediate distraction from the only distraction in the room worth losing my senses in. I stuffed my hand into my messenger bag to get my phone out, maybe find a mindless game to fiddle about on, or scroll through Instagram, or even try some conversation via texting, only to again remember that it was currently sitting in the glove box of my car. I hastened to my forgotten novel, plucking from where it had been tented on the table, my page held by its splayed pages, only to find that I could barely finish a sentence without losing interest. Frustrated, I chucked the novel onto the span of booth beside me, turning to my coffee as a last resort. Almost impossibly, the beverage was still hot, a repeat offence to my already wounded mouth. I instantly blamed the boy, him and his stupid golden aura, probably has some magical warming qualities, kept my steaming coffee at a near burning level. 

I turned my eyes toward him again, but with childlike curiosity or simple annoyance, but with clear judgmental purposes, narrowing my eyes and furrowing my brow, setting my jaw just so in order to seem rigid and bothered. 

He didn't take notice of my strop.

Instead, he did something almost even more remarkable than existing as breathing gold, he smiled. Not at anyone or anything, he simply smiled, a wide, toothy grin that would make the Cheshire cat proud. It damn near blinded me for good, that smile. Perhaps a random memory had resurfaced, as they are wont to do, and he fondly reexamined it, or many he told himself a joke, or just felt like it was necessary at that moment in time. Whatever the catalyst was, it filled me with more emotion than I could bear. Caught in the wave of this strangers being, I was being ripped apart by the beautiful dichotomy that was warring within me. A sense of euphoria and happiness brimmed near full inside me at the sight of such a worldly wonder, but, I was also placed beside the jaws of insecurity and jealousy. Who was I to be allowed to witness something as ordinary and impossible as this boy, who was I to desire him?

Nobody, a dark voice said. The only person, a bright voice argued. 

I wanted him. I wanted to know his name and his favorite color, what his first memory was and how he slept at night, how he took his tea and what exact amount of breaths it took to ruin him, what his most valuable trinket was and what he would do with a million dollars, who he never knew he needed and what he hated having for dinner. He sat in a café sipping god knows what from an aged coffee cup, surrounded by the confetti of business life, looking like he had just pulled an all-nighter, and god did I want him. 

But how? In what universe would I have to courage to approach such a feat of nature? I lowered my eyes in resigned truth, ashamed with myself and my near indestructible shyness. Needing an immediate boundary from my recently discovered addiction, I loosened my hair from its tight bun and shook them into my face, a curtain of long curls to not only hide behind, but to diminish my view of him. Nothing like cold turkey.

I forced myself through a few pages of my admittedly boring murder-mystery book, and had just about reassembled the pieces of my sanity, fitting the jagged edges of my boring life into its abysmal mold when the beautiful broken boy broke my nearly completed structure of composure.

I'm still note entirely sure what it is he initially said, though I've always assumed it was along the lines of "Hi!", "Excuse me", or "Could I bother you real quick?". The greeting was never what mattered anyway, it was him, in front of and addressing me that's been seared into my mind.

"Pardon?"

A light laugh and tilting smirk, "Sorry mate, didn't mean to interrupt you, love a good read meself, but I was just wondering if you had a pen or something that I could steal for a mo', mine ran out of ink." 

There was no faltering on my behalf, not a second time, I rushed to be able to do whatever I could for this now infinitely closer beauty. Lightening quick, I reached into my bag and retrieved the first writing instrument I could find. A pencil, not a pen.

An internal grimace at my blunder, he wanted ink, not lead, "Oh, sorry. I'm sure I've something better in here, hold on."

"Nah, mate, really, this is fine, just need something to get me notes down, coulda been like charcoal or summat for all I care." He chuckled a light, dancing laugh, and took a few steps back, retreating just as quickly as he had appeared within my vicinity. 

"Promise I wont use it for long, return it in tip top shape!" He gave a slight salute, almost like a soldier or a pirate to their captain, and turned on his heel, walking back to his disaster of a work space.

"Okay", I managed to practically whisper, after he had returned and was sitting in his own seat once more of course. I forced myself to return to my joint hiding and laborious reading agenda, resolutely refusing to give the now spoken to stranger another glance. My eyes followed their command, sticking to ink and paper, my mind however, strayed most deviantly. I couldn't help but thrill to the thought of my property being within his space, of my belonging being enveloped within his golden light. Would my pencil turn to gold eventually? Would I be the first human being to ever own a solid gold Ticonderoga? Or was he one of those people who chewed the ends of writing instruments? Would his oral fixation lead to an exchange of our DNA? Allowing that my thoughts were getting much too ahead of themselves, I reigned them in as best I could, but refused to not let myself be excited about what could come of such unintended physical communication.

He had told the truth when he said he wouldn't need it for long. He used my pencil for less than half an hour, but it was enough time for me, it being in his hands at all was better than not.

I looked up only when I heard his footsteps approaching, the slight crick in my neck alerting me to the strict rigidity that had been an unfortunate side affect of my strict 'no looking' decree. I saw that his table was free of paper, spotless, leaving no clues as to the chaos it was just moments ago, and I wondered if he kept his apartment as cluttered or if it was simply a method of working. Or perhaps he lived in a townhouse...

"T'anks again mate, really saved me hide," another light chuckle, "And of course, here, as I promised, your pencil, returned safe and sound."

He handed me my yellow utensil, and my infernal hopes fluttered within me at the possible ideas of earlier, but I gratefully took it back from him, carefully grabbing the ending he proffered me, taking care that there was no actual skin to skin touch, I wasn't sure I wouldn't spontaneously combust if there had been. It seemed entirely plausible with him next to me. 

"Welcome, not a massive favor to ask really anyway." I offered the best smile I could manage, a little baby of a grin, too self conscious of the 50 watt smile I knew he was more than capable of.

"I politely disagree. You entrusted me with a piece of your property, t'ats real trust. I coulda run off wif it, snuck away when I knew you weren't looking. Never woulda seen it again." His voice had a light, teasing tone to it, and it made him seem even more unreal. If he was able to tease me with kind words, what filthy words could he also tease me with?

"Fair enough. Though, then, I'd have to tell someone about the boy at the café who stole my pencil, and you'd go down in history as the Pencil Nabber, and I'm not entirely sure how flattering of a title that is." I would later pat myself on the back for managing to crack a joke through my wracked nerves, and also allow myself two guilt free sessions of intense masturbation featuring vivid thoughts of him. 

"Very true, me mudder wouldn't be too proud o' dat. Much prefer my record to stay spotless, don't need any ASBOs or nuffin." His grin had faltered. "I gotta be off, life don't stop for nobody, but thanks, again, for da pencil, meant a lot to me." The teasing tone made a reappearance, and it pulled a full blown smile from me, my lips tugged so severely upwards that I knew my craterous dimples would be on full display.

"Yeah, course, wasn't a problem."

"See ya round..."

"Oh, Harry," I needlessly pointed to myself, "My name's Harry."

"Well, just Harry, I'm just Niall. Have a good day." And with that final anecdote, he gave a pretend curtsey and bowed out of my life, toting his work bag over his left shoulder, sauntering thin hips around the corner and out of my view, presumably out the cafes door and my life.

I didn't let myself sulk for too terribly long, there was dinner to make and a very probably attention deprived kitten waiting for me at home, along with laundry and the compulsory call to my mum. I packed up as quickly as I had chosen my seat earlier, dumped my almost entirely untouched coffee into the nearest trashcan, and hurried to make my exit, as though any/everyone else knew of my ridiculous sulk, who it was about and why it happened. Paranoia at its finest. 

I had almost made it to the doors when I realized someone was trying to get my attention. A repeated shout of "Curls!" and a questioned, "Harry?", made me stop and have a look round. A childish hope demanded that the caller be Niall, that the beautiful blonde would be bounding over in his halo of gold, but the voice was very decidedly female. There was a busty brunette barista coming my way, holding out a piece of folded paper far from her body, as though it held the Queens dirty secrets. She pushed it into my hand and retreated with a secretive smile, immediately rising red flags in my mind. Perhaps my paranoia had been pertinent. 

"Thanks?"

-Harry,

Like I could've snuck away without you seeing me, yours eyes were practically drilling holes in me head for quite some time. And, when they weren't, mine were stuck on you and dem curls. I like coffee, and you, let me know when both can happen simultaneously,

Niall

A completely forgettable phone number followed his scrawled signature, but my heart instantly tattooed them onto my soul, caressed them like a lover, became just a familiar and necessary as one. 

His phone was clearly an object from the gods, it gave me the good grace to witness him, and now, to have him for real.

**Author's Note:**

> If anybody does actually read this, let me know if you'd be interested in an expansion of the story, maybe from Niall's perspective, or even a lengthy fic, gotta put them writing juices to work.


End file.
